


Midnight Picnic

by jamwrites



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Corrupted Gems, F/M, Gen, Picnics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-16 17:08:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4633353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamwrites/pseuds/jamwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Steven and Connie venture out for a midnight picnic, they find a little more adventure than they bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midnight Picnic

The Shimmering Waterfall of Endless Tears had turned to stone.

At least, that was what it looked like to Connie. Although she was already a good six feet off the ground from her spot on Lion's back, she craned her neck to get a better look at her surroundings. The swirling pink portal closed with a crack behind her and Steven. The sound rebounded off the high cliffs all around them like a firecracker. Echo, echo, echo…

"Steven, are you sure this is the right place?" A cold wind blew through Connie's heavy braid, strong enough to lift it off her shoulders. When Steven had described the Pillars of the Moon to her, she had envisioned some grand, sweeping landscape filled with strange but beautiful beasts and flowers. That had been the case for every other Gem place she had been to. But this…

"It has to be." Steven leaned down and talked into Lion's ear. "Lion, you didn't take us to some alternate dimension, did you? Are you confused?"

Lion growled, a deep sound that resonated from the base of his throat, and shook his head free of Steven. He sat, and Connie found herself sliding off his slick fur. Her instincts caught her before the ground did and she landed on her feet, touching down with one hand. A moment later Steven followed and would have met stone with his face if she hadn't caught him.

"Thanks," Steven said. He smiled at her and Connie swore she had swallowed a butterfly. "This place kind of remind me of the Castle of Ultimate Shadows from book four."

"Kind of." Connie lifted an eyebrow. Technically, the Castle of Ultimate Shadows was supposed to be underground, but it was described as having the same giant pillar structures.

Another gust of wind picked up, ruffling Lion's fur like the waves of the sea. Connie had to hold her dress in place, but at the same time she felt beads of sweat prickling at her hairline. The wind was hot, and muggy as well.

Steven poked his head inside Lion's mane to retrieve their picnic basket while Connie turned in a slow circle. The Pillars of the Moon were beautiful, she would give them that, but it was a strange sort of beauty. Old, she thought, and sad. The high, cracked stone structures towering above them looked like they traveled straight to the moon, which hung massive and yellow in the night sky. Spiral stone staircases curled their way up the pillars, but they were far from the most impressive things about them. Stone statues the size of skyscrapers were carved into sides of the smooth stone cliffs. Most of the statues were many-armed women, carved so they looked like they were embracing the pillars or reaching out to each other. There was something oddly familiar about the women, but Connie couldn't think of when she would have seen them before.

"Garnet said there would be waterfalls." Steven had emerged from Lion, holding a wicker basket bursting with as much jam and bread as they could pack for their midnight picnic. "But this kind of just looks-"

"Dead." A shudder passed through Connie when she finished the sentence. The hair on the back of her neck raised suddenly, and she turned to see what was behind her, but it was nothing. Only the face of a statue from a lower pillar, gazing past her and Steven and Lion to look at the horizon.

Steven touched her arm. "Do you still feel like jam time?"

"Of course." She smiled at him and reached for the basket, swallowing her unease. This place was magical, she told herself. There probably was something around here, but the Gems had told them it would be safe. Still… "Steven, could you maybe-maybe grab my sword from Lion?" She forced another smile. "Maybe I can do some practice at the top of the Pillar."

**

Half an hour later, they were still climbing the steps.

Steven had taken the basket from Connie before long, but she hadn't minded. Her sword, strapped to her back, felt like it weighed more than usual, and the steps were steep. Sometimes they would pass crumbled piles of rock that had once been arches, carved from the statues' hands, forcing them to climb over. In other places the stairs had completely disappeared, fallen away into the nothingness below the Pillars. It was those times, hopping over the abyss, that the wind seemed to pick up the most, as if it were trying to blow her off the cliff. Just as suddenly as it came, however, the wind would always die back down.

It was when the breeze had melted away into nothing again that Connie heard it.

At first she was sure it was in her head. But after a half a hundred more steps, she was almost certain she could hear heavy, plodding footsteps on the stairs behind them. She bit her lip and touched Steven on the shoulder. When he turned, she put a hand over his mouth.

"Listen," she hissed. They stood still for a moment, letting the sounds of the night wash over them. That vast, sucking yawning that came from being in a high and cavernous space, the lapping of the ocean far, far below, and…

Steven's eyes widened, and Connie knew he had heard it. Thump. Thump. Thump.

"What do we do?"

"Phrun," he said through her hand, pointing up with one finger, and she nodded. Without another word, they took off up the steps. Soon, Connie was gasping for air from the exertion of their flight and Steven sounded more like a locomotive than a half-human. The stairs wound up, up, up, always traveling left, circling endlessly around the pillar. As fast as they ran, though, the plodding behind them never seemed to grow any more distant. If anything, Connie thought it was getting louder. They no longer had to stop in silence to hear it. Now it was a bass drum, throbbing in her ears in time to her heartbeat. Quicker than that. Tha-thump tha-thump tha-thump.

"We…have…to go...faster!" She wheezed, but Steven only grunted in response. The moon was so big now, a giant eye watching them from its perch in the heavens. She was so entranced by its sheer size that she almost ran straight into Steven's back when he froze.

"Why aren't we running?" She yelled, her hand flying to the hilt of her sword.

"Because of that." When Connie followed his finger, her hand tightened on the hard leather, but her shoulders sagged. Where there should have been stairs winding their way up the Pillar, there was only a massive heap of stone. Another collapsed arch, but a massive one. The rock pile was so huge and so steeply slanted, there was no way they could climb over without sliding off the face of the cliff.

"What do we do?" Even as she asked, she already knew the answer.

"I guess we have to fight." Steven offered her a hand up to the final stair. When she had first met him, she would have stood behind him, but if Connie had changed at all over the last year, it was because of Steven Universe. Now she took her stance up beside him. Her blade sang as it was drawn from its sheath, and the night was lit up a brilliant pink when Steven's shield formed around his arm.

"Are you ready?" He asked.

"Of course." Despite herself, the corners of Connie's mouth tugged upwards. She remembered when they had stood in almost the same position, facing off against an army of Holo-Pearls. Now their battle wasn't pretend. Whatever was coming up that stairs lived in a world that wasn't quite Earth and wasn't quite Gem, which meant it was probably magical and definitely dangerous. Tha-THUMP tha-THUMP tha-THUMP-

She saw it first. A massive shadow that was loping up the staircase on all fours. Its massive paws slapped at the stone as it ran towards them, its pink mane swirling in the wind like a war banner-

"Wait!" Connie threw her arm across Steven's chest just as he launched his shield at their attacker. "Steven, it's Lion!"

She was too late to stop him from throwing, but she had knocked his aim off. Instead of hitting Lion, Steven's shield spun away, arcing out over the side of the cliff and coming back in a turn as graceful as a fighter jet. The shield crashed into the stone stairs below them. An explosion of stone and dust washed over the canyon, and slabs of rock that must have weighed more than several tons sloughed off like dead skin, tumbling down…to crash into the arms of one the statues. With a crack that sounded as if the Earth were splitting in two, the arm fell away into oblivion.

Neither of them spoke as they watched the rock fall. Lion slowed to a walk as he neared them, and finally stopped, panting. Connie couldn't shake the feeling that they had just made a very loud disturbance in a place that was never meant to be disturbed.

"Lion?" Steven put a hand on his back as the animal nudged past them, sniffing at the pile of rubble. His voice shook ever so slightly. "What are you doing up here buddy?"

"I don't know, mayb-" Connie was cut off by Lion's growl, somehow deeper and more menacing than the one they had heard earlier. The hair on his back raised and his lips parted to show his teeth. Another hot wind touched Connie's hair.

She stared at the rubble. She looked down at the broken arm of the stone woman.

And a horrible thought entered her mind. She knew why she recognized that statue.

The world spun around Connie as she turned to look at the massive stone face staring at her from across the span of sky. She watched as the woman's lips closed and felt the warm wind stop. The stone woman's pupil-less eyes blinked, and then slowly, slowly fell to gaze at her broken arm, which had, until a few moments ago, stretched across the abyss to grasp the hand of another statue.

The woman's eyes turned from her lost limb to look directly at Connie and Steven.

She froze. Her muscles refused to move, refused to warn Steven, to tell him to look, to run-

And then his hand was clutching her hand, pulling her away and out of her trance, towards the swirling pink portal that Lion had already disappeared through. Out of the dark, a mossy stone hand the size of a truck loomed, coming to crush them. Connie closed her eyes as the portal enveloped her and the hand came down-

She heard the distant boom below before she even knew where she was. She clutched Steven's hand as they stumbled to a halt, breathless. Blood pounded in Connie's ears, the world tilted around her. The picnic basket had spilled on the ground beside them, sending jam and bread and chips sprawling over the ground like blood oozing from a wound.

"Are we safe?" It took her a moment to adjust to her surroundings. If the moon had been huge before, now it took half of the sky, so close she could touch its craters. Where the stone steps had been jagged, the ground they stood on was smooth; the very top of the Pillar, so wide across she could have fit an entire library on top.

"I think so, for now at least. Are you okay?" Steven turned to look at her just as another boom shook the rock under their feet. "Connie, I'm so sorry, I didn't know…" Tears were pooling in Steven's eyes, and he sat down hard. "I just wanted to have a nice night with you. And now we're at the top of this weird Pillar and all the food is ruined. Because of me."

"No!" Connie knelt beside him. "Steven, this isn't your fault!"

"Yes it is. I took us here. I threw that stupid shield at Lion. This is probably some Gem thing and it's probably because I'm here. I ruin everything."

She bit her lip. What was she supposed to say to that? Technically, he was probably right. Weird Gem stuff happened all the time around Steven, but she couldn't tell him that.

"Steven," Connie touched his cheek. "Remember in book 4, when Prendergast and Ice Fist are trapped in the Castle of Ultimate Shadow by the Ghost King?"

"Of course." Another earthquake-like rumble. Connie looked over Steven's shoulder, and saw a statue climbing the Pillar next to theirs. Judging from the tremors, they were going to have some giant woman visitors of their own pretty soon. Steven started to follow her gaze, but she turned his face back towards hers. "Prendergast was ready to give up and let Ghost King carry him away."

"But what did Ice Fist do?"

"She…punched him in the face."

"After that, Steven."

His eyes met hers, and his face settled into a look of determination. "She punched the Ghost King in the face, and then talked with him about his problematic childhood."

"Exactly. They found out what the problem was, and they solved it." Connie stood, and offered a hand to Steven. At the same moment, a stone hand appeared on the edge of their pillar. "I think I know what's going on, Steven. I know why Lion took us up here." He took her hand, and stood. "I think these are the same kind of statues as the one outside your Temple in Beach City. They're Gem-made statues."

She watched as he caught onto the idea. "And where there's Gem tech…"

"There's bound to be a Gem."

The hand's owner rose over the edge of their Pillar like some terrible behemoth, her face a mask of fury and anguish. Connie turned in circles, searching. There, in the center of the pillar; a glint of yellow light, almost indistinguishable from the moonlight. Connie looked over at Steven and saw that he had seen it to.

"I'll handle the stone lady," he said.

"I'll get the gem."

"Be careful," they said unison, and then took off. Connie sprinted towards Lion and jumped onto his back, hoping against hope he would listen to her like he had when she had fought Lapis. Lion must have heard her thoughts, because the moment she touched his fur he took of like a rocket. Where before his loping stride had scared her, it now felt like a drumbeat beneath Connie. Strong, unshakeable.

Behind her she could could hear the booming crashes of Steven's fight with the statue, coupled with flashes of pink light. She made herself not look back. If she did, she might turn around instead of doing what she needed to do. The gem, glittering on a pedestal in the center of the Pillar, was so close now. She could feel the waves of agony and confusion washing off it. The corrupted gem was confused; it didn't know why it was trapped in stone. They had hurt it, and now it was lashing out.

Beside Connie, another hulking shadow drew itself up and over the side of the Pillar. The six-armed woman, dressed in moss and cracks, lumbered towards her, reaching out with so many hands, so many fingers. She drew her sword. Lion wouldn't make it to the gem in time.

"Lion, jump!" She screamed, and he listened. They sailed through the air, but their landing on the woman's hand wasn't as graceful as she had hoped. Connie spilled from Lion's back for the second time that night, just barely catching herself in a roll. Lion's momentum sent him sliding off the edge of the mossy arm to land on the Pillar, unable to help her.

Without thinking, without waiting, Connie acted. Sword parallel to her side, she ran as hard as she could up the statue's arm. Stone hands came to swat her off, but she ducked and weaved through their clutching fingers. One of the woman's six arms was resting right by the gem. All she had to do was make it over her shoulder and onto that arm, and she was home free. Connie knocked away a finger with her sword, the impact sending shockwaves up her arm, nearly making her drop the steel. A hand came swooping at her out of the dark and she slid on her knees the way Pearl had taught her, clearing the woman's shoulders and starting on the downhill slide to the other arm.

An ear-numbing explosion from where Steven fought sent shards of rock hurtling towards Connie, pelting her exposed skin. She just had time to glance in his direction, she had to, to make sure he was okay-

It was only a split second lapse of attention, but it was enough. When Connie looked back towards her target, she found instead a wall of rock. She tried to jump but was too slow, and the hand smashed into her side, sending her careening off the arm, out into open air.

"Steven!" The ground was rushing up to meet her, so she squeezed her eyes shut. No rolling would break this fall, it was too far, too far-

Her world turned to pink, and instead of hard stone, Connie found herself pillowed against a rose colored shield. She opened her eyes, and found Steven standing over her, arms held wide, his bubble already fading.

"Thanks," she said, and he beamed. "we should go. Together this time."

"Exactly what I was thinking." The last of his shield disappeared around them, and then they were running again, together, not separate. One being. Another light began to glow, but this one softer. Steven summoned his shield to keep a boulder from crushing them, and Connie cut a stone finger in two as it tried to flick them off the Pillar. Their footsteps were in sync, their breathing together. The glow became brighter, brighter.

And then they were them. Stevonnie laughed out loud as they sprinted, spread their arms wide and let their hair stream behind them. Dodging the falling chunks of rock was as easy as breathing, pumping their arms as effortless and powerful as the rushing of a river. Lion came loping up beside them, and together they all made the last dash for the gem. The statues were far behind them now, nothing compared to what they two of them where. The world was a mosaic of blurred moonlight and sweet aching muscles. They reached out their hand and grabbed the gem. Rock had grown around it like creeping weeds, but with their strength it broke free like it was nothing.

Stevonnie skidded to a halt, sliding across the smooth stone, twisting to look at the falling statues behind them. Separated from the Pillars, the corrupted gem had nothing to latch onto, and so the statues became just statues once again, freezing mind-grab. Stevonnie laughed again and tossed the gem into the air, catching in a bubble as it turned over and over. The night air, no longer the breath of giants, tickled the back of their neck.

All at once, they slipped apart from each other, breathless, giggling.

"Steven!" She shouted, tackling him into a hug. "That was…the best thing ever!"

"I know," he laughed again and hugged her back, and then seemed to realize what he was doing. A bright flush crept into his cheeks and he let her go. Connie felt the wings flapping in her chest again, but didn't mind the heat in her face this time.

"I guess we did it, huh?" She sucked in a breath of air.

"Yeah, I guess we did. All by ourselves."

"Definitely just by ourselves." Connie trailed off. "Steven, you're not still upset about-"

"I just-"

"-because if you are, you shouldn't be." Only a few steps separated them, but Connie closed the gap quickly. She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed. "Why would I want a boring picnic when I can fight giant rock monsters with you?"

"I just thought…this place was supposed to be beautiful," he said into her shoulder. "and you were looking forward to it."

"Steven you dope; I was looking forward to spending time with you." She pulled away and opened her mouth to say something else-

-before, all around them, the world lit up. A great gurgling noise started under their feet and grew and grew before erupting all around them. Glowing blue water rose from the stones in fountains forty feet high, glittering and cascading over the sides of the Pillar. Far around them, the other Pillars were erupting with their waterfalls again as well.

"The Shimmering Waterfall of Endless Tears!" Steven held up his arms, and Connie grinned as they were both soaked by the misty down pouring of the geysers. The jets of water were already calming, transforming into bubbling fountains that spilled off the sides of the Pillars. The water really was glowing, lighting up Steven's face with shifting colors of blue and green. Lion whined and picked up his paws from the water, which reach up to his ankles and Connie's knees. Shimmering mist kicked up from the water, and great clouds of spray rose from the cliffs. Rainbows of every color reflected in the water vapor, and Connie swore that a second moon was born in the illusion too.

They spent the rest of the night splashing and swimming and rolling around in the fountains. The water was sweet to drink, and they found that when they held their scrapes and bruises under the surface for a few minutes, the water healed them with a quiet murmur. The bread in their basket was soaked through, but the jars of jam were still good. With their legs dangling over the edge of the Pillar, they shared the jars.

"Do you remember the end of book six?" Steven asked at one point. They were at the bottom of their second jar by then, delicious peach preserves.

"When Mortimer and High Mage Lucy found the secret grotto?"

"Yeah, that part." Steven was silent for a long time. "How long did they stay there together?"

"A long time I think." She stared out over the edge, over the stars and the moon and the statue women, who she now thought were wearing slight smiles. Peaceful at last. "All night, until the royal Court comes looking."

He didn't give an answer, only offered her the spoon and the jar. She took it and leaned her head on his shoulder, and thought of the evening at her house when they had watched the snow fall together. It had been peaceful then too. Quiet and still.

She loved making those kind of memories.


End file.
